Drink Talk Roll Extended #3: Wyrd Science

The newest episode of Drink Talk Roll has aired and raises a lot of new questions like “Why is the School of Continued Progress conducting experiments on psionic powers?”, “Who are Dr. Skye and Ace?” and “What exactly will happen to the mermaid the party liberated at the end of the episode? Will she come back and do something big for them?” All of those will be answered in time but let’s talk about something else for now: Making your own homebrew content for your favorite tabletop roleplaying games.

This is at least somewhat related to the episode as the party has reached level 3 and that means everyone has now locked in their subclass including Manuel who has chosen to use one of my own homebrew subclasses: the Harbinger fighter.  When we talked about it in previous episodes, it was known as “Crusader” but I recently changed the name because there’s a lot of baggage that came with the old name. (Note: There will be info on how to check out the Harbinger subclass at the end.)

Now, how exactly do you start when coming up with something like a homebrew subclass? I like to start with a concept like “What if Eldritch Knight but divine caster?” for the Harbinger or “How would I make a monk who was raised by animals?” for a Wild Soul monk I’ve been working on as well. This allows me to come up with a rough idea of what the subclass should be doing. 

The next step is checking if there is something similar in the base game already that I can base it around.  In Harbinger’s case, the Eldritch Knight connection was already there so using that as a base was a no-brainer. The Harbinger uses the same spellcasting progression but uses Charisma instead of Intelligence and swaps out the rest of the abilities.  

For example, instead of getting a teleport on using their Action Surge feature, they instead increase nearby allies’ current and Max HP by 5 for the next minute to symbolize them rallying their party.  I decided upon this by examining the original ability and finding it to be equivalent the misty step spell. Since misty step is a 2nd level spell, its replacement should also be a 2nd level spell, in this case aid.  Had I just wanted it to do raw damage I could have consulted the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide Chapter 9 to determine the equivalent amount for how I wanted it to deal damage. I like using this kind of quick and easy comparison as a way to figure out the power level of new abilities.

Speaking of power and balancing, when designing homebrew content, I prefer to have things be overpowered at first rather than underpowered. An old professor of mine who literally (co-)wrote the book on game balance recommend something similar with the thinking that it’s easier to make something weaker than it is to figure out how to make it stronger. This is stuff that I’ve kept in mind whenever I make homebrew content.

Okay, let’s just take a bit of time to talk about something that was actually in the episode: introduction of sci-fi elements into fantasy TTRPG campaigns. I know some people don’t like it but to me, it’s like peanut butter and chocolate. You can expect more of this stuff whenever the School of Continued Progress shows up. The school and especially the mysterious Dr. Skye are behind a lot of the wonderous new inventions that are making their way into the world including the guns Jedah is going to be using now that he’s level 3. Other things that exist but haven’t been seen yet include basic automata that will become the basis of the Arretin equivalent of Warforged but that’s still years off in world.

However, they are also responsible for some of the darker sides of progress as we saw in this last session. It seems they’ve been looking for signs of psionic powers in the population. I haven’t been shy about revealing my inspirations for the adventures of this campaign and this part was directly inspired by Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (999) and its sequel Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward.  The puzzles in the room are all slightly modified versions of ones found in 999 while the color-based door locks are based on the ones from Virtue’s Last Reward.  

Like Manuel was able to deduce, the two sides of the warehouse were meant to essentially have children from one send psychically send the information to the other side making these puzzles a lot easier when you have access to both sides. I hadn’t put as much thought into it originally but I think the three puzzles also test certain skillsets in communication. The picture puzzle requires a back and forth as they try to figure out which figure is in the strangely shaded picture. The card puzzle is just a simple retelling of the rules and the map puzzle is much more complicated order and location transmission. It’s too bad that no one had figured it out before the Masked Man showed up and slaughtered their scientists and all but the other kids. We still don’t know why he did it but all will be revealed eventually.  

I can’t wait to show off more of the world to you as the party travels across it. We may even get to see the campus of the School of Continued Progress in Meridan. You know, now that I’ve typed it a few times, “School of Continued Progress” is a long name. Maybe I should abbreviate it?  SCP?  Does that sound too ominous?  

See you next time. Oh, and if you want to check out the Harbinger subclass, it’s up now on our Patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/atojconnections)

- Your friendly neighborhood GM, J.D.